Can PD be meaningful?

05/17/2011

This is my first post where I am asking for a lot of feedback. In my quest to become a better educator I am recognizing the importance of the external support that we need to better ourselves. Today is a Professional Development (PD) day in the School District of Philadelphia and we are having some great conversations at our school about what we are going to be doing curriculum-wise next year as well as how to effectively use technology to implement that vision.

I would love for any readers out there to share stories of your PD experiences, both good and bad. What speakers have been brought in for you? What programs are you learning about? What decisions are you making as a staff/department/etc? Please share for everyone to learn.

Comments

J. C.

05/17/2011 15:44

I just finished our PD day. It was spectacular. I was called down to the office yesterday during 7th period (we have 8 periods) and told that I would be running a 45-minute PD session on Google Docs. That was it. So I threw something together and presented with six other teachers in the same situation. Our principal wasn't even present.

Eddie

05/19/2011 11:27

During my time with SDP, my experience with PD was mixed. First of all, out of five PD sessions three were mandated by either the school or the district. I enjoyed the time when I had the choice of selecting my PD session, however, when I did have the choice, it wasn't all that great.

For example: Mandated PD - Filling in the advisory sheet (the official student count of the day). I know it sounds easy (especially after you muck it up a thousand times), but it would have been easier with more examples and a clear guide to (and again sounds simple) take attendance.

On the flip side, a mandated PD that was fun and actually supplemented my prior education was SDP presentation of "The First Days of Schools" by Harry and Rosemary Wong. Great PD for a great purpose. The timing was important as well (as I will give an example of a time when a PD session was not well timed) because we were about to start the first day of school.

PD that is not beneficial can sometimes be connected to the timing. For example, technology PD. I had to sit through a ton of PD sessions on the "Promethian Board." Don't get me wrong, great teaching tool, but I didn't have one. I wasn't going to get this tech tool that current year, nor was I going to get one the following year. I'm a smart guy, but if I were to get a Promethian Board five years from now, I would need that PD all over again.

But at least I was able to have the opportunity to go to a PD session while at SDP.

I currently teach in Texas and I have not had one PD session all year.

SueLJ

05/23/2011 23:45

Hi! I stumbled here via The Notebook. I attend the PDs as a student-teacher at Saul in the Fall of 2010. Some were very prosaic, and neither I nor my cooperating teacher got much out of them, honestly. It was paperwork and reading through things as a group that we all could have done on our own (such as the handbook for Middle States... really?).

BUT. The best one was an offsite, in which my coop teacher demonstrated using digital cameras and models to create stop-motion videos (in our case, mitosis of the cell). It was useful to the participants and was immediately applicable across subjects, and everyone was engaged. Aside from the laptops/computer issue, it was relatively cheap. My teacher in the past got permission for students to use cell phone cameras, and the programs used are freeware or come with the computer.

The second decent PD was towards the end of the second quarter, when the teachers got the chance to compare notes on specific students to ID problems and recommend actions. Again, immediately relevant and useful, and also a measure of support: if a student was having trouble in multiple subjects we found that out without pulling records just by talking it out, and sometimes I found out more about my students, like the one subject they loved.

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Author

I am a math teacher in the School District of Philadelphia. I infuse technology and real-world problems into my curriculum in order to prepare my students for the future. I would love for people in Philadelphia to recognize we teachers can't do it alone. If you don't believe me, come visit my classroom!